In Brazil, the hard right wins again

By Gwynne Dyer Oct. 9, 2018

Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro are populists cut from the same cloth. But Trump’s views shift when it is to his political advantage—he once supported most of those policies—whereas Bolsonaro has always belonged to the hard right.

Jair Bolsonaro won 46 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s first round of the Brazilian presidential election, with twelve other candidates running. Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

LONDON, U.K.—A man who makes Donald Trump look like a bleeding-heart liberal will almost certainly be Brazil’s next president. Jair Bolsonaro won 46 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s first round of the Brazilian presidential election, with twelve other candidates running. Fernando Haddad, who will face him alone in the runoff in three weeks’ time, got only 29 per cent.

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